Bizet - Carmen / Maazel, Migenes, Domingo [VHS]

This movie version was filmed on location, conveying a kind of atmosphere, a sense of space, movement, and presence hard to achieve in a staged performance shot for television. It takes the action out of doors for many scenes. The opening titles are superimposed on the bloody conclusion of a bullfight. The changing of the guard in the opening scene, with the boys' chorus playing soldier, the crowd scenes, the dance number that opens Act II, the panoramic scenery of the smugglers' mountain hideout, all benefit from the freedom granted by movie cameras. But the music is, on the whole, more effectively performed in the Covent Garden production, which also handles close-up shots better, perhaps because it was directed with a small screen in mind. The opera house atmosphere will make hard-core opera fans feel more at home. The movie version uses the opera's original opera comique form with some spoken dialogue rather than recitatives. --Joe McLellan